{"id":17385,"date":"2015-09-03T21:59:30","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T21:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/colorlines.madeostudio.com\/article\/breaking-presents-aye-nako-indie-rock-band-challenging-genres-homogeneity\/"},"modified":"2015-09-03T21:59:30","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T21:59:30","slug":"breaking-presents-aye-nako-indie-rock-band-challenging-genres-homogeneity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/article\/breaking-presents-aye-nako-indie-rock-band-challenging-genres-homogeneity\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Breaking\u2019 Presents: Aye Nako, an Indie Rock Band Challenging the Genre’s Homogeneity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u2018Breaking\u2019 Presents: Aye Nako, an Indie Rock Band Challenging the Genre’s Homogeneity<\/h3>\n

\n By Sameer Rao<\/span> Sep 03, 2015<\/span>\n <\/p>\n <\/div>\n

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Name: <\/strong>Aye Nako<\/p>\n

Hometown:<\/strong> Brooklyn<\/p>\n

Sound:<\/strong> ’90s-tinged pop-punk with guitars that go from a mid-range twang to a fuzzy rumble. Lyrics subtly but powerfully investigate the specific struggles of LGBTQ folks and people of color in the punk and indie scenes. <\/p>\n

Latest Project: <\/strong>\u201cThe Blackest Eye\u201d EP (2015, Don Giovanni Records) <\/p>\n

Why You Should Care:<\/strong> Indie scenesters from neighborhoods such as Los Angeles’ Silverlake, Chicago’s Wicker Park and most of Brooklyn like to pretend that their cultivated taste and DIY aesthetic insulates them from the race and gender problems that plague much of pop culture. And when presented with these issues, few are willing to admit how deep the systematic inequality goes. The Afghan-Indian writer Sarah Sahim<\/a> said as much in \"The Unbearable Whiteness of Indie,\" a trenchant editorial for Pitchfork<\/a>, a music criticism and festival giant that is a huge part of the problem. <\/p>\n

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In indie rock, white is the norm. While indie rock and the DIY underground, historically, have been proud to disassociate themselves from popular culture, there is no divorcing a predominantly white scene from systemic ideals ingrained in white Western culture. That status quo creates a barrier in terms of both the sanctioned participation of artists of color and the amount of respect afforded them, all of which sets people of color up to forever be seen as interlopers and outsiders. Whiteness is the very ideal for which art is made in Western culture, be it the cinema of Wes Anderson or, say, the artists on Merge Records.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cultural arbiters such as Afropunk have started to reverse that trend, creating powerful platforms for independent artists from marginalized groups and safe spaces for fans to enjoy their work. But the indie\/punk rock sector of the music business is still filtered through a white-, male-, cis-normative lens. Aye Nako<\/a>, a Brooklyn-based rock quartet, is one of a number of acts trying to break the glass ceiling with catchy riffs and irreverent lyrics about systemic racism and its purview in this culture. <\/p>\n

The four members of Aye Nako\u2014vocalist\/guitarist Mars Ganito, bassist Joe McCann, guitarist Jade Payne, and drummer Angie Boylan\u2014embody the sociopolitical ethos and sonic textures of punk and DIY. Mars and Jade are people of color, while Mars and Joe identify as trans or multigender. Their experiences of those identities being erased or silenced in indie culture and in broader American society constitute important parts of their lyrics. <\/p>\n

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